UFC Fight Night 116 Betting Tips, Picks and Predictions

I’ve added a VIP Chat Room to the website that we can now use to discuss my VIP Betting Tips in more detail. I’ll be online most of the week if you’d like to ask me any questions about my tips for UFC Fight Night 116. You can access the VIP Chat Room by clicking here.

UFC Fight Night 116 gives us a good opportunity to get back on the horse after a disappointing result last weekend at UFC 215.

UFC Fight Night 116 looks like a good event for betting so I feel confident that we can bank a profit and kick start another winning streak. We have finished the final quarter of 2015 and 2016 very strong, and I am working hard behind the scenes to make sure that we also have a strong finish to 2017.

Please keep checking this article regularly as I may add more betting tips as we get closer to the time of the event.

In the table above we give our picks and predictions for every fight. This is to help you put together teams in Fantasy MMA or enter Pick’em competitions. Please do not bet on all of these picks. You should only bet on our official VIP Betting Tips that you can find further down this page.

These picks and predictions are based on which fighters we perceive to have the best betting value. This doesn’t necessarily mean we think the fighter we pick has any notable advantage over their opponent.

The results of these picks are not tracked. We share them with the community because some members use them to enter Fantasy MMA and Pick’em competitions.

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Mike Perry vs Thiago Alves Betting Tip and Prediction

Mike Perry is a young and hungry fighter who refuses to quit, and those qualities can take him far in a sport like MMA where heart and determination count for so much. But from time to time he will run into situations where his heart and toughness will not be enough because his opponent will have just as much heart as he does. In these situations, he’ll need better skills than his opponent, and if he doesn’t develop them he is going to struggle to compete against the more technical fighters in the UFC.

There are different levels to MMA, and right now Perry is nowhere near the level he needs to be at to compete against the top 15 fighters in the division. We saw this happen in Perry’s fight against Alan Jouban where he struggled to deal with Jouban’s superior technique. Based on what I’ve seen so far from Mike Perry I believe that he’ll struggle even more in this matchup against Thiago Alves.

Whenever I make statements like this, it is important to acknowledge the fact that Mike Perry is an exciting young fighter with a bright future in the sport. At just 25 years old I believe he will go on to do big things in the UFC, but right now he needs time to develop his technique.

We recently saw a young, tough, talented young fighter in Jason Knight get destroyed when he went up against the more experienced Ricardo Lamas. This was a classic example of a match up where Knight’s toughness and aggression were not enough to overcome the massive skill gap that existed between Knight and Lamas. I believe this is a similar type of matchup because I don’t believe that Perry has yet developed the skills that he would need to beat a guy like Thiago Alves.

If you go back and watch the Jouban vs Perry fight, you’ll notice that Perry does an excellent job of cutting off the Octagon and pressuring Jouban, but when he gets to the position where he should be uncorking a strike, there is a moment of hesitation.

This hesitation occurred because Jouban was overloading him with footwork, feints, and movement and Perry didn’t have the knowledge to process it in time to work out what he should do. This meant that Perry was able to work his way into good positions, but he was frozen with confusion when he arrived at his destination. Occasionally in that fight, we saw Perry get frustrated and bum rush Jouban, which mostly led to him eating a big shot, only to then see Jouban circle away from danger and reset.

Perry does a great job of pressuring his opponent’s, but he doesn’t always do a great job of capitalizing on the positions that he can work his way into.

Pressure is a very dangerous weapon in the UFC. It enables less technically skilled fighters to cause opponents with superior skills significant problems. Just this past weekend we saw how Rick Glenn used relentless pressure to dish out a big beating to one of the Featherweight divisions hottest prospects in Gavin Tucker.

Pressure can be a massive equalizer in MMA, but it only works if you can use the pressure to throw your opponent’s off their game and take them out of their flow and comfort zone. Daniel Cormier has built a career off being able to do this, and there are many more examples of how pressure can help fighters beat opponent’s who have superior skill.

Perry’s relentless pressure helped him come close to beating Jouban, but it wasn’t enough. Jouban had moments of panic, but he mainly stayed composed and cruised to a win.

So why am I focusing so heavily on this fight, when we should be breaking down how Perry matches up with Thiago Alves?

I’m focusing on this fight because Jouban wrote the Blueprint for how to beat Mike Perry and Thiago Alves trains at American Top Team which is one of the most tactically adept MMA gyms in the world. Just this past weekend we saw Amanda Nunes execute a masterclass in game planning as she essentially took two entire rounds off to conserve enough energy to spam takedowns in the final minutes of the fight and steal a decision away from Valentina Shevchenko. We’ve also seen similar tactics over the years employed by many different ATT fighters. Robbie Lawler typically doesn’t do anything for the first 3-4 minutes of a round and then cranks his output up late in a round to steal it from his opponent.

Why is this significant?

It’s significant because Thiago Alves is better equipped to execute the game plan that Jouban used to beat Perry than Jouban was.

This is because Thiago Alves NEVER panics under pressure.

You can walk Alves down, pressure him as much as you want and try to throw him off his game, but it won’t work. Alves is a tough, gritty, nasty little Brazilian Pitbull with nerves of steel. He never panics.

Pressure makes Diamonds, or it crushes people and when you pressure Alves he most certainly turns into a Diamond…

I am excited about this matchup because Alves is a pure technician when it comes to striking, but we rarely get to see it because almost all of his opponent’s try to take him down. This will be the first fight in a long time where Alves will be able to let his hands go without fear of being taken down, and I believe we’re going to see him shine because of this.

Alves is a bad matchup for Perry because he stays light on his feet and uses great footwork to move around his opponent. He also does an excellent job of using feints and movement to set traps.

Perry’s strategy usually involves walking his opponent down, creating moments of chaos and then landing big shots while his opponent panics under the weight of his relentless pressure. We have seen this in every single one of Perry’s fights in the UFC. The difference in this matchup is that Alves thrives in moments of chaos. If you go back and watch Thiago’s last fight against Patrick Cote, you’ll see how he stays in the pocket with his eyes wide open as Cote bum rushes him and tries to pressure him in Boxing range. What was the outcome? Cote was a bloody mess at the end of the fight and got rocked and dropped multiple times. Alves thrives in Chaos, he’s seen it all and Perry will have to go through hell to beat him.

If you’ve been a member of our community for a while, you’ll know that I am not a fan of betting on aging Brazilians with a ton of MMA miles on the clock, but in some situations, when the odds make sense we have to make an exception. Just like last weekend when we bet on Rafael Dos Anjos to beat Neil Magny, there are going to be situations where we need to make exceptions to our own rules.

Dos Anjos should have been a much bigger favorite over Neil Magny and I believe the odds on this fight are also way off. There’s no way that Thiago Alves should be this big of an underdog against Mike Perry. The odds on this matchup are off. We’re getting a good amount of value here.

There’s no question that Thiago Alves is significantly better than Perry in every single aspect of MMA, but last weekend Tucker was better than Rick Glenn everywhere, and we all know how that played out…

What I’m trying to say is. Perry is a young, hungry fighter. He’s only 25 years old which means he is learning fast and making big gains from fight to fight. For all, we know he might have trained his ass off since the Jouban fight to correct the mistakes he made. From what I saw in his last matchup against Jake Ellenberger it seems unlikely, but it is always a possibility.

There’s no doubt that Perry and Alves are heading in opposite directions. Thiago’s career is coming to an end while Perry’s career is just getting started. At some point Alves will start losing to guys like Mike Perry, I just don’t think that this day has come yet. Thiago Alves looked sharp in his last fight against Patrick Cote, but one day in the next couple of years he’s going to lose that sharpness and that is the reason why this bet carries an element of risk because we don’t know when that day will come. It might be Saturday at UFC Fight Night 116 or it might be 3 years from now. It is our job to try and use the information we have available to us to predict when that day will come and based on Thiago’s performance against Patrick Cote I believe that he still has a lot of time left in the UFC. We know for a fact that Alves is better than Perry everywhere, we just don’t know when Father Time is going to come and punch him in the face.

This is why they call it gambling. We didn’t know that Gavin Tucker was going to abandon the Dominick Cruz style striking and cardio that got him to the UFC in the first place. We also didn’t know that Shevchenko was going to go for a lazy head and arm throw in the last minute of a 5 round fight and throw away the belt against Amanda Nunes. These were losses that happened due to intangibles that were difficult to predict, but it’s important to remember that it works both ways. We didn’t know for sure if Rafael Dos Anjos would be able to overcome the enormous size difference against Neil Magny and yet he went onto win easily in the 1st round.

This is gambling, this is fighting and any man or woman can lose to any other man or woman on any given night. When you accept that unpredictable things will happen and that wins and losses are completely out of our control, you will be a much better gambler, and ultimately you will unlock your potential to make a lot more money.

All we can do is make the best decisions based on the information we have available to us before the fight. We will win some bets, and we will lose some bets, but ultimately, over time we will win a hell of a lot more money than we will lose.

When we have good runs, we must not get complacent, and when we hit bad patches, we must not give up. We need to keep grinding, and eventually, it will pay off.

Thiago Alves is a good bet based on the information that we have available to us right now. It’s possible that Perry might make significant improvements in a short space of time and end up winning at UFC Fight Night 116, but based on what we know it’s unlikely, and for that reason, we have to bet on Alves at the current odds.

Reasons for betting on Thiago Alves to beat Mike Perry...

Thiago Alves is significantly better than Mike Perry in every single aspect of MMA.

Thiago Alves is a significantly better striker than Mike Perry. He lands more strikes per round, has better technique and he also throws a much more diverse range of strikes.

Thiago Alves has a legendary chin. He has NEVER been knocked out in 33 pro fights.

Almost everybody that has fought Thiago Alves has tried to take him down. This will be the first time in a long time where Alves will not have to worry about defending takedowns, which means he can finally let his hands go.

Thiago Alves is very good at dealing with pressure from his opponent. He has excellent footwork and movement and he does not panic when his opponent’s get aggressive.

Thiago Alves is much more clinical in striking exchanges. If Perry and Alves start to trade, Perry will most probably get the worst of it.

Mike Perry constantly moves forward and stands very heavy on his lead leg. Thiago Alves does a great job of chopping his opponent’s down with leg kicks.

Mike Perry has low level striking. He doesn’t pose a threat to someone as experienced as Alves.

Thiago Alves has significantly better wrestling and BJJ. If Alves wanted to win this fight easily he could take Perry down and control him on the ground. It is unlikely that Alves would choose to do this, but it is a possibility.

Mike Perry is very easy to game-plan for. He fights every fight with exactly the same style. He also cannot switch things up and go to a plan B. Thiago Alves trains at ATT which is a very tactically astute MMA gym. They should be able to put together a game-plan for Alves that should enable him to win this fight easily.

Thiago Alves has excellent cardio. Mike Perry has slowed down in a couple of his past fights.

Mike Perry’s chin is questionable, he has been knocked out and rocked multiple times throughout his career.

Mike Perry has very bad striking defense.

Thiago Alves thrives against opponent’s who will stand and strike with him.

Risk factors with betting on Thiago Alves to win...

Thiago Alves is currently in the tail end of his career and appears to be on a decline.

Mike Perry is tough, aggressive and has a ton of heart.

Mike Perry is 8 years younger than Thiago Alves.

Mike Perry is violent and dangerous in moments of chaos.

Our Betting Tip

Thiago Alves to win

Stake

3 Units

[3% of your bankroll]

Odds

Decimal = 2.38
Moneyline = +138
Fractional = 69/50

42%

Implied Probability

The bookies believe that Thiago Alves has a 42% chance of beating Mike Perry based on their current odds.

70%

Our Probability

We believe that Thiago Alves has a 70% chance of beating Mike Perry based on our extensive research and analysis.

Justin Ledet vs Azunna Anyanwu Betting Tip and Prediction

I’ve held off on placing this bet all week because I was hoping to find someone to parlay Justin Ledet with either on UFC Fight Night 116 or on the Cage Warriors or ONE cards that are taking place today.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyone to put in a parlay accumulator alongside Ledet, so now I recommend betting him straight.

Out of all the fighters competing at UFC Fight Night 116, Azunna Anyanwu has the toughest challenge to overcome. Anyanwu is taking this fight on just 1 week’s notice, and he is primarily a striker.

Anyanwu uses the same gameplan for every fight, he plods forward and tries to land a massive bomb on his opponent with a loaded overhand right. His style is similar to Dan Henderson’s. Anyanwu throws a very low volume of strikes and doesn’t set up his overhand right, which makes him very predictable. He carries a lot of power in his right hand, but he’s undersized for the division and has bad cardio.

I believe that Justin Ledet has by far the best Boxing in the Heavyweight division. Sure there are other guys like Mark Hunt, Stipe Miocic and Francis Ngannou who hit hard, but when it comes to pure technique, Ledet is better than all of them. In all my years of watching MMA, I can’t remember any other Heavyweight who had the crisp technique, speed, accuracy or educated jab that Ledet shows in his hands.

This is a tough fight for Azunna Anyanwu because Ledet’s jab will prevent him from being able to time the overhand right and settle into a rhythm. Ledet also has excellent striking defense and a 9-inch reach advantage over Anyanwu. This will make it extremely difficult for Anyanwu to land anything significant in this matchup.

I’m not a huge fan of betting on big favorites, but this is one of those situations where Ledet is very close to free money. The average odds on Ledet are currently set at around 1.25 | -400 | 1/4 at most bookies, but if you shop around you can bet him at 1.29 | -345 | 29/100. This isn’t a glamourous bet, but it gives us an easy return of 25% to 29%. This is an excellent return for minimal risk, and they all add up over the long run.

Reasons for betting on Justin Ledet to win...

Justin Ledet has a 9 inch reach advantage over Azunna Anyanwu.

Azunna Anyanwu is taking this fight on just 1 week’s notice.

Justin Ledet has high level Boxing. Azunna Anyanwu is very predictable. He plods forward and tries to land the overhand right. Ledet should be able to pick Anyanwu apart with his superior technique.

Just Ledet has a great chin and very good striking defense.

Justin Ledet has excellent cardio for a Heavyweight. Azunna Anyanwu has bad cardio.

Anyanwu is 36 years old. Ledet is still only 28 years old. This means that Ledet is 8 years younger than Anyanwu. The younger fighter wins around 65% of the time when there is an 8 year age gap in a fight.

Anyanwu is slow and predictable.

Anyanwu is not athletic enough to shoot in for takedowns. He is top heavy and cannot get in low enough on his opponent’s hips to take them down.

Anyanwu is very one dimensional. He cannot switch to a plan B if he is struggling to land his overhand right.

Anyanwu does not set up his overhand right.

Anyanwu throws a very low volume of strikes per round. He also throws a very limited range of strikes.

Risk factors with betting on Justin Ledet to win...

Anyanwu has KO power in his right hand.

Anything can happen in MMA.

Our Betting Tip

Justin Ledet to win

Stake

5 Units

[5% of your bankroll]

Odds

Decimal = 1.25
Moneyline = -400
Fractional = 1/4

80%

Implied Probability

The bookies believe that Justin Ledet has an 80% chance of beating Azunna Anyanwu based on their current odds.

90%

Our Probability

We believe that Justin Ledet has a 90% chance of beating Azunna Anyanwu based on our extensive research and analysis.